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Watch, Watched, Watching: November Rain


Ramsay B.

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Watched Interstellar the other day - very epic proper SF stuff, a bit surprised it wasn't based on like a Kim Stanley Robinson novel, particularly the slightly multiple-ending structure. I also have no idea how you would follow it if you're not a bit familiar with a set of standard space SF concepts. But hey it was fun! I also caught Ambulance on a flight and it was surprisingly fun - I'm a sucker for anything with a bit of convoluted mechanics and farce. In shows, marathoned all of Yellowjackets a few weeks ago, which was great, wtf ridiculousness and now watching White Lotus. (Otherwise I've watched nothing but reruns of Midsomer Murders - and read books that are basically variations on Midomer Murders - for like six months because life.)

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28 minutes ago, Datepalm said:

Watched Interstellar the other day - very epic proper SF stuff

I know people mock the science, the bookcase etc, but every single time I watch this movie I end up crying like a baby.

Absolutely stunning piece of cinema.

 

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1 minute ago, Spockydog said:

I know people mock the science, the bookcase etc, but every single time I watch this movie I end up crying like a baby.

Absolutely stunning piece of cinema.

 

Yeah I mean you don't go into this to peer-review the physics, do you?

I didn't find it terrible sad-emotional, but I did find it surprisingly thrilling and sense-of-wonder and dread in places, particularly the middle section when they're trying to figure out what was going on with the different planets and all the fallibility and mistakes (although, come on, the time dilation vs. years of data sent from the water planet was instantly obvious and seems a bit of a plot hole.)

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4 hours ago, Spockydog said:

I know people mock the science, the bookcase etc, but every single time I watch this movie I end up crying like a baby.

Absolutely stunning piece of cinema.

 

People mock the science? I thought it was generally regarded as one of the better movies science-wise. Obviously not perfect, but fairly solid. Kip Thorne was an advisor on the movie, specifically regarding the black hole stuff, and turns out they got it right based on recent evidence.

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10 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

People mock the science? 

Aye. They do.

The relativity stuff seems perfectly fine to my ill-educated ass. But the dude falls into a black hole, doesn't get spaghettified, and then sends bookcase messages to his daughter backwards through time. 

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this movie. It is one of my all time favourites. But the bookcase was a bit silly.

And wasn't there a magic watch or something? 

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1 minute ago, Spockydog said:

Aye. They do.

The relativity stuff seems perfectly fine to my ill-educated ass. But the dude falls into a black hole and sends bookcase messages to his daughter backwards through time. 

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this movie. It is one of my all time favourites. But the bookcase was a bit silly.

And wasn't there a magic watch or something? 

The watch was on a bookcase shelf, too, and he uses it write the message that allows his daughter to figure things out.

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6 hours ago, Spockydog said:

I know people mock the science, the bookcase etc, but every single time I watch this movie I end up crying like a baby.

Absolutely stunning piece of cinema.

 

The soundtrack is great, especially No Time for Caution, as they try and dock.

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1 hour ago, Spockydog said:

Aye. They do.

The relativity stuff seems perfectly fine to my ill-educated ass. But the dude falls into a black hole, doesn't get spaghettified, and then sends bookcase messages to his daughter backwards through time. 

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this movie. It is one of my all time favourites. But the bookcase was a bit silly.

And wasn't there a magic watch or something? 

The science is rock-solid until the ending. The ending is entirely speculative, but per actual scientists it's largely fine because we have literally no ability to know what goes on past the event horizon.

I personally didn't like the ending because it was way too Deus Ex and neatly solved virtually everything while also adding shitty time paradoxes to the mix, but I didn't think about it being non-scientific at all. 

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4 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

His dark materials drops on 18th December in UK as a box set on BBC iplayer. Going to be hard making it last. 

Ooh, it's a box set? Hang on, I thought it was getting released on a Monday? I even put a note on my phone calendar about it. *checks calendar* Yes, here it is, Monday 5th. What up? It was being timed to start right after The Peripheral finishes this Friday. DANG IT.

We finished 1899 which was pretty much what I was expecting, as in 'little bit like Dark but not anywhere near as good'. At least it was only eight episodes.

Then we watched S3 of Deadwind, the Finnish detective drama where the lead goes around doing idiotic things in the name of investigating crimes, with her stupid long hair flapping around all the time. Again, luckily it was only eight episodes.

I have been trying to finish up TWD, which I stalled on in S10. The problem was that I couldn't remember where I stopped. Cue me having to watch six bloody episodes with this vague sense of deja vu, only realising at ep 18 that I'd already seen that one. URGH. It's painful. But I have completed it now and feel compelled to zip through S11 as that is the final one. I have to say that the final ep of S10, which is a Negan retrospective, was quite good. Like, why did they keep on giving us dross and filler bullshit so much of the time when they could actually do good epsiodes? So frustrating.

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51 minutes ago, Isis said:

Ooh, it's a box set? Hang on, I thought it was getting released on a Monday? I even put a note on my phone calendar about it. *checks calendar* Yes, here it is, Monday 5th. What up? It was being timed to start right after The Peripheral finishes this Friday. DANG IT.

That'd be HBO, not BBC

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Got around to seeing Ruben Östlund's follow-up to the wonderfully funny satire of the art world, The Square, with his send-up of the phenomenally wealthy and social media influencers Triangle of Sadness. Sadly, it's not as good as The Square, but had some fun bits. My favorite scene involved Woody Harrelson's drunken mega-yacht captain who happens to be a Marxist trading bon mottes from Ronald Reagan, Edward Abbey, Karl Marx, Margret Thatcher, and Lenin with Zlatko Buric's "King of Shit" Russian capitalist. Tragically, actress Charlbi Dean who plays model/influencer Yaya passed away at the age of 32, apparently due to a lung infection which likely was exacerbated by the fact that her spleen had been removed years earlier due to a car accident in 2008 (the spleen's apparently quite important for the immune system). 

The Rewatchables podcast also got me to see 1981's Lawrence Kasdan directorial debut, Body Heat, a neo-noir that probably kicked off a whole wave of erotic thrillers in that decade and beyond. Kathleen Turner's film debut, William Hurt's second film, and they're just both amazing in it. It's a sweaty, torrid affair, while for the most part sex is never actually depicted -- it's almost always foreplay or aftermath. The film owes a lot to Double Indemnity, though Turner's also channeling Lauren Bacall . This film caps off one of the most remarkable openings of a screenwriting career, as just before that Kasdan had written The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark.  Ted Danson's great in a supporting role as a Fred Astaire-loving lawyer who's friends with Hurt's Ned Racine.

Started Vinland Saga, the anime adaptation of Makoto Yurikama's Viking historical manga, and I'm actually finding it pretty appealing so far. Great animation from Wit Studio (Attack on Titan, Ranking of Kings), an interesting use of history, intriguing if fairly basic initial story. 24 episodes in its first season, with the second season apparently debuting early next year.

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I saw Triangle of Sadness too.  lt was pretty good, but ultimately the message it was sending was bleak, and seemed like a thing for rich people to say "if we don't dominate the poors, they'd do the same to us!"   So a bit nihilistic.

Wednesday was delightful, with clever dialogue.  The Hogwarts Houses trope wasn't needed, a bit lazy, but I like everything else about it.  Apparently it outperformed Stranger Things 4 in its first week, too.   https://deadline.com/2022/11/wednesday-breaks-record-most-hours-viewed-netflix-ratings-1235184006/

 

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Been watching a Netflix series called The Grecco Family.

Its Mexican set, one of the Narcos (Ramone) characters plays a role in this. The plot is about a family that appears upper middle class, but secretly engages in kidnapping, ransom and murder to maintain their lifestyle.

Enjoyed it.

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16 hours ago, SpaceChampion said:

The Hogwarts Houses trope wasn't needed, a bit lazy,

Agree, but All the Shows do it -- nor did Rowling invent it, nor did Jane Yolan.  It was around for decades already in the 20th C.  Sheesh, Ursula LeGuin  had one -- and by no means the only one.

Throughout, hands down >ah-em<, Thing is my favorite character!  Delightful, smart, charming, effective, witty -- everything to like.  

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